Three
by GougeAway
Summary: She doesn't say a word, but Ichigo can taste the despair rolling from her in waves. Ichigo, Rukia, Renji. Character death. Renruki and Ichiruki if you squint.


(A/N: I haven't written fan fiction in a long, long time. I won't beg you to review, but if you do, be honest. Disclaimers are pointless. Of course Bleach isn't mine. - GougeAway)

_Three_

When Ichigo finds her, she's in the furthest reaches of South Rukongai. She has suppressed her reiatsu, but the ebb and flow of her existence in this world alone leads him here. She crashes through him in waves and he feels like he might drown in her.

He finds her in a place called Inuzuri. Drunken men in stained, torn clothing lie unconscious on the cracked ground, some only stirring to scream unintelligible threats at him. Street vendors selling rotten persimmons shrink from Ichigo in his shinigami uniform in some mixture of fear and distrust, before their shifty eyes return to their produce and they loudly threaten to cut the fingers of anyone who steals from them.

The distinct taste of blood in the air slides down the back of Ichigo's throat. Children run here, not for fun, but for their own survival. Their bare feet seem to dance across the dirt and rubble of the ground, and Ichigo realises, with some horror, that they pay no heed to the broken glass marring their skin. Realises that they probably cannot feel it. Realises that these children have probably never seen, let alone worn sandals in their lives and have had to adapt without them.

He thinks this is where she grew up. Where _they_ grew up. But it is difficult, too difficult, to reconcile the image of the Rukia he knows with the faces of those starving orphans, their skin too dirty and eyes too wide with fear. He wonders if this is how she and Renji lived; running from adults, stealing food, sleeping with one eye open. Ichigo is suddenly reminded of how Rukia eats so quickly, an entire meal gone in just a few bites, and how he sometimes teases her that nobody is going to take her food from her if she slows down and tastes it. He remembers how Renji can – could – and the weight in his chest grows – sleep without blankets or pillows on hard wooden floors and still treat it as a luxury.

She doesn't say a word when he appears in the doorway. She doesn't say a word when he numbly moves to sit beside her. He doesn't think he even registers in her brain. He has found her in this place, this dilapidated building in the slums of Inuzuri, where the walls are damp to touch and he can feel the dirt of the floor through his shoes. Tattered blankets line the floor, which he supposes are the closest thing the occupants, wherever they are, have for warm beds. There are no windows, the only source of light being the space where a door should be. Rukia stares at blackened stones near a corner of the room, arranged in a circle into what Ichigo thinks must be a makeshift fireplace.

Rukia doesn't say a word, but Ichigo can taste the despair rolling from her in waves. He has never so badly wanted her to speak to him, about everything and nothing, about anything at all. Anything to block out this ringing silence in his ears, anything to prevent this terrible sense of finality from setting in, because he doesn't want to believe it yet. The feel of Rukia beside him like this has never been so painful. The brush of her soul against his own has been a comfort, a source of quiet strength for him in every situation until now. Now, however much she is trying to reign in her spiritual pressure, he feels like she's crashing and screaming and raging against his skin, without saying a word.

Her voice cracks when she finally uses it, ripping through the grief in the air between them like a tidal wave.

"We lived here."

Ichigo had an inkling as to why he had found her here, but the confirmation still surprises him. He says nothing, but looks at her from his right, where they sit side by side. Her tear stained face still turned to the blackened stones of the fireplace, she says, "That was our kitchen." Her head turns to focus on a spot just over Ichigo's shoulder, and she says it was their living room, and then turns back to where they both sit cross-legged on the floor. She jabs a finger on the floor at Ichigo's left foot and says, "This was my bedroom." Then traces a spot on the floor at her own foot and says, "This was Renji's." Her voice cracks as she says his name. She almost doesn't, almost can't.

"There were five of us," she says. Rukia has never looked or felt so far away to him, and Ichigo finds it unlikely that she has ever spoken so much about her life before the Seireitei to anyone before. A twinge of guilt crawls under his skin; he is an intruder here, and he feels that Rukia is in the process of tearing open old wounds that his eyes are not allowed to see. He has heard snippets of her life before him, of stolen water and persimmons, of floating lilies on a river somewhere, of a man with a wooden leg that Renji would heartily imitate while Rukia laughed behind her hand. Snippets of inside jokes, phrases, and people that he never knew. Of a lifetime, and so much more, of memories that he isn't, and isn't supposed to be, privy to. Renji was all of that for her, and he doesn't have it in him to want to replace him.

"We would take it in turns. Sleeping. Two kept watch, three would sleep. The winter months were unbearable. We had two blankets, and we had to pull them together and share." A corner of her mouth turns up, so slightly it would be imperceptible to anyone but the boy whose closet she slept in for two months. Ichigo thinks Rukia's talking to herself more than to him.

"The Rukongai is harsh on children. The adults are thieves, murderers. The children, if left to fend alone, become them if they don't die." Rukia, in a cold, damp room in the slums of Inuzuri, where dirt seeps into her skin with every second more she spends sitting on the floor, says, "We were lucky."

"Lucky?" Ichigo echoes before he can stop himself. He regrets his incredulous tone, but Rukia doesn't take offence; simply throws him a nod from over her shoulder before continuing in a cracked whisper.

"We all came here alone. Renji and I, and our friends, we met in this crumbling city, this backwater town. And we somehow became a family." Her voice shakes, and Ichigo, in some effort to fill the hole in her chest and lift the grief on his shoulders, reaches for her and draws her to him. She stills, but doesn't hold him back in return.

Because Renji, young and round faced and un-inked, sits in the corner of this room with her as they try to cook the fish they caught in the river. Renji, with frustrated concentration on his childlike face, stands in the middle of the room, focusing on the tiny ball of light forming on his fingertips while their friends look on in awe. Renji, older, skin and bone, lies on this floor with her at night and does his best to shield her from the cold air rushing through the cracks in the wall. Renji looks at her here, in that way that sometimes made her feel Inuzuri wasn't so bad after all, and tells her he's glad he didn't die before he met her.

Then Rukia sobs, the most heart wrenching sound he can imagine, and doesn't stop. And Ichigo, Ichigo Kurosaki who has fought gods and changed entire worlds, in all of his brash heroism, doesn't know what do to.


End file.
